Seventy Years of the Smith-Mundt Act and U.S. International Broadcasting: Back to the Future?
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Perspectives SEVENTY YEARS OF THE SMITH-MUNDT ACT AND U.S. INTERNATIONAL BROADCASTING: BACK TO THE FUTURE? By Emily T. Metzgar CPD PERSPECTIVES ON PUBLIC DIPLOMACY Paper 3, 2018 Seventy Years of the Smith-Mundt Act and U.S. International Broadcasting: Back to the Future? Emily T. Metzgar April 2018 Figueroa Press Los Angeles SEVENTY YEARS OF THE SMITH-MUNDT ACT AND U.S. INTERNATIONAL BROADCASTING: BACK TO THE FUTURE? by Emily T. Metzgar Guest Editor Vivian S. Walker Faculty Fellow, USC Center on Public Diplomacy Published by FIGUEROA PRESS 840 Childs Way, 3rd Floor Los Angeles, CA 90089 Phone: (213) 743-4800 Fax: (213) 743-4804 www.figueroapress.com Figueroa Press is a division of the USC Bookstores Produced by Crestec, Los Angeles, Inc. Printed in the United States of America Notice of Rights Copyright © 2018. All rights reserved. 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ISBN-13: 978-0-18-222931-4 ISBN-10: 0-18-222931-9 About the USC Center on Public Diplomacy The USC Center on Public Diplomacy (CPD) was established in 2003 as a partnership between the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism and the School of International Relations at the University of Southern California. It is a research, analysis and professional education organization dedicated to furthering the study and practice of global public engagement and cultural relations. Since its inception, CPD has become a productive and recognized leader in the public diplomacy research and scholarship community. Having benefited from international support within academic, corporate, governmental and public policy circles, it is now the definitive go-to destination for practitioners and international leaders in public diplomacy, while pursuing an innovative research agenda. USC received the 2008 Benjamin Franklin Award for Public Diplomacy from the U.S. State Department in recognition of the university’s teaching, training and research in public diplomacy. CPD’s Mission The USC Center on Public Diplomacy seeks to advance and enrich the study and practice of public diplomacy through research, professional education and public engagement. CPD Perspectives CPD Perspectives on Public Diplomacy is a periodic publication by the USC Center on Public Diplomacy (CPD), that highlights scholarship intended to stimulate critical thinking about the study and practice of public diplomacy. Designed for both the practitioner and the scholar, this series illustrates the breadth of public diplomacy—its role as an essential component of international relations and the intellectual challenges it presents to those seeking to understand this increasingly significant factor in global society. CPD Perspectives is available electronically in PDF form on CPD’s website (www.uscpublicdiplomacy.org) and in hard copy by request. For general inquiries and to request additional copies of this paper, please contact: USC Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School University of Southern California 3502 Watt Way, Suites 232-234 Los Angeles, CA 90089-0281 Tel: (213) 821-2078; Fax: (213) 821-0774 [email protected] Seventy Years of the Smith-Mundt Act and U.S. International Broadcasting: Back to the Future? Emily T. Metzgar* Indiana University May I say that I sometimes wonder if the rest of the world is as eager to hear the American story as we think it is? John S. Knight Abstract The United States has engaged in peacetime international broadcasting and related activities since passage of the Smith- Mundt Act in 1948.2 Formally known as the U.S. Information and Educational Exchange Act, Smith-Mundt is the statutory foundation for the U.S. government’s transparent production and dissemination of news and information intended for foreign audiences. The political rationale for American engagement in these activities, the legislative structure authorizing them and the environment—both international and domestic—within which these activities unfold have evolved in the seven decades since Congress first deemed “telling America’s story to the world” a worthwhile endeavor. This paper for the CPD Perspectives series discusses the legislative actions, the rhetoric and the context for U.S. * The author thanks Sergio De La Calle and Elli Schank for their research assistance, as well as Indiana University’s Institute for Advanced Study and the University of Southern California’s Center on Public Diplomacy for their financial support of this work. She also acknowledges the archives of the Associated Press in New York; the University of Chicago Library; and Indiana University Libraries for access to their collections and for the kind assistance of their librarians and archivists. 6 SEVENTY YEARS OF THE SMITH-MUNDT ACT international broadcasting (USIB) at key junctures since the end of World War II. The pattern that emerges is one of both continuity and disconnect, from a consistently stated desire to promote democracy and freedom of information to variable views about how to manage the broadcasters and navigate a changing international system. The analysis presented here has particular relevance for the contemporary political environment where concerns about the efficacy of U.S. government-sponsored broadcasting and other messaging activities abroad have driven legislative change while raising new worries about the potential for government messaging tools to be turned on American audiences at home. Discussion begins with the deliberations that led to passage of Smith-Mundt then moves to an evaluation of amendments intended to curtail domestic access to USIB content, continues with a discussion of post-Cold War legislation that dramatically altered the bureaucratic structure responsible for overseeing international broadcasting, and finally arrives at recent actions undertaken to impose increased accountability on the broadcasters and to relax constraints on domestic access to their content. In addressing these issues, this report connects past to present, offering a framework for current discussions about U.S. international broadcasting and related information diplomacy efforts in the contemporary global communication ecosystem. This report does not purport to be a thorough retelling of the history of the Smith-Mundt Act’s passage in early 1948, nor of amendments or other legislation that came later. Rather, the work presented here seeks to offer a modest overview of the legislation that has governed U.S. international broadcasting, as well as public discussion about it, since the end of World War II. SEVENTY YEARS OF THE SMITH-MUNDT ACT 7 Past as Prologue? It was a time of growing geopolitical instability with the Russian menace on the rise. Politicians in Washington worried that nefarious actors across the globe were spreading disinformation about the United States. Even worse, they were concerned that foreign agents had corrupted key democratic institutions in the American homeland. While this scenario is reminiscent of the contemporary American context, it also describes the view from the United States seventy years ago as the world drifted into a cold war following World War II. In 1943, well before the end of the war, President Franklin Roosevelt was thinking about how the American government’s wartime international broadcast efforts— which had come to be known as the Voice of America— could transition from a propaganda operation to peacetime production of news about the United States and the world.3 Roosevelt sought to ensure that the country would continue spreading a message of democracy and information freedom well after the war’s end. He presented the rationale for continued engagement in broadcasting as promoting “better understanding between the peoples of the world” and insisted that even while still at war, the United States should tend to laying the “proper foundations” for such efforts to continue after hostilities came to an end.4 Two years later, on the day of Japan’s surrender, President Harry Truman commissioned Secretary of State James Byrnes to establish a permanent international information program as part of the United States’ new peacetime foreign policy.5 Similar to Roosevelt’s earlier hopes, Truman sought to make certain that the world would continue to hear about the country on its own terms. In an executive order, Truman specified that the government’s postwar broadcasts would present “a full and fair picture of American life and of the 8 SEVENTY YEARS OF THE SMITH-MUNDT ACT aims and policies of the United States Government.”6 The broadcasts were not intended to function as propaganda but rather as a source of accurate information about the United States in a complicated world. In responding to the president’s request, Byrnes echoed Truman’s objectives, noting “We would defeat our objectives in this program if we were to engage in special propagandist pleading. Our purpose is, and will be, solely to supply the facts on which foreign people can arrive at a rational and accurate judgment.”7 Byrnes then set out to rally support for legislation that would authorize government engagement in a range of activities that today are described as public diplomacy. Despite unwavering executive branch support for the proposed peacetime efforts to engage foreign publics, it was not until early 1948 that President Truman was presented with legislation sanctioning the government’s public diplomacy activities, including international broadcasting and other messaging efforts.